Hansel Transcription
Stanislaw Hansel: Transcription of seminar discussion: 'Studies in Negative Time- July 2006
This transcription allows us to explore some of the fundamental compositional ideas of the composer:
The following are extracts from an introduction to Stanislaw Hansel’s ‘Studies in Negative Time’ with questions as part of a ‘meet the composer’ session.
Following an introduction to the ‘Musical Time Machines’ concert and the work of eae, the floor was given to the composer to introduce his work:
“The way I came across this way of teaching was with a piano student in 2003 who was not making much progress with his understanding of music theory and had got himself really confused. ‘How many beats is that worth?’ asked the student (it was a crotchet and we were in 4/4 time) . He was of the opinion that it was worth 0! The thinking being that this was the basic value and other values were a subdivision of this. Afterwards I began thinking what if the crotchet was 0 and that if you had something shorter than 0 (e.g. a quaver) how do you go there?
The student was not old enough to know about minus figures and going backwards to say -0.5 etc. However, if you can have music which consists of a infinitesimally small value then you could envisage music coming in to your music, or existing at the same time but finishing just as you are about to start playing.. so you won’t actually hear the music which is going backwards in time…
Another analogy, would be when physicists talk about a part of an atom (and a very small particle within which I think are called tachyons? )They were able to prove that time travel still exists in the future because these minute particles were arriving before they set off. So therefore they were going backwards in time while the rest of the particles were travelling in the right direction.
“My own music has a lot to do with creating tensions between not many notes. I make a particular use of fractional notation. “
...I’m interested in popular cosmology and in particular string theory… although I have to say I don’t really understand it.. but the idea is that whilst we are sitting here there are another 9 versions of us I believe somewhere else. We are not doing the same as the other versions but somehow floating on the surface. However we would not exist without the other versions of ourselves (i.e. these parallel dimensions) and that partly fed into this music…..
Tom Warden (student):
“ Do you mean that with string theory when one decision is made in one dimension the opposite is made in the other?
Stan Hansel:
“Yes that’s right although I’m not a mathematician, and even they cannot agree what exactly is happening in other dimensions. Also that there maybe many other dimensions… however for the music itself this should be represented by a series of tensions.. Now what I like to do is indicate within the music where a tiny fraction of what is happening in the other dimension(s) maybe finishing
At this point the second page of the first study was projected indicating where the composer has indicated the arrival of a signal from negative time….
“.. What you can see is that the top 3 staves are for negative time.. you don’t actually hear these fractional notes.. but you can imagine that you can hear them…this in itself is interesting because does it make any difference that we imagine that something is happening which could be happening or might not be happening?
…What I’m actually playing are the 4 staves below…what you hear is based on what is actually happening in the parallel dimension…
… Now I’ve done that sort of thing throughout, but it’s not as if there’s a whole composition going on.. for that I’d have to have a brain like Einstein’s! But I’m trying to create a sense of tension that some of my music is pre-existing… Now the music that comes in like this, uses signals. I like signals! They are part of everyday life. You can go to a shop and hear a till ringing, or a mobile phone ringing. A signal to me means that something is going to happen; it demands your attention.
In my music, I use accents to highlight a signal and then after that has happened the rest follows on. .. it’s a bit like your mobile phone ringing where you are going from not doing anything to suddenly being expectant.
When you get a signal (e.g. telephone ringing) it’s as if there was a potential for that ringing in the first place… i.e there is someone at the other end isn’t there? They do say this about electricity: before you turn a light on, there is a potential for it to be there (for something to happen)… and that to me is what gives my music tension. Any questions?
When you get a signal (e.g. telephone ringing) it’s as if there was a potential for that ringing in the first place…i.e there is someone at the other end isn’t there? They do say this about electricity: before you turn a light on, there is a potential for it to be there (for something to happen)… and that to me is what gives my music tension. Any questions?
When you get a signal (e.g. telephone ringing) it’s as if there was a potential for that ringing in the first place…i.e there is someone at the other end isn’t there? They do say this about electricity: before you turn a light on, there is a potential for it to be there (for something to happen)… and that to me is what gives my music tension. Any questions?
Why did you choose to write this for the keyboard and not the piano? (student)
Hansel: The sounds I require are very quiet sounds (played staccatissimo). Those sounds linger a little bit more than I need them to on the acoustic piano.
…Very quiet sounds can create an illusion: were not always sure of the nature of the sound itself, it could be a distant voice? Have any of you had the occasion when perhaps drifting off to sleep.. you hear a note played.. its so clear it really IS as if someone has just played a note. This has happened to me and my children several times. I have a name for this I call it psychic music. Its all in the mind and perhaps because you are tired. The sounds perhaps exist in the house and you think you are hearing them again.
“I thought perhaps someone was going to ask me why choose a keyboard rather than another acoustic instrument(s) e.g. a string quartet? Well there are problems about playing this sort of music. I have (for example) being trying to write a symphony for a long time. I like what I have written but it’s not possible to keep it all in time because I’m using such varied tempi, and such complex fractional notation (e.g. a 3rd of a crotchet followed by a 5th, then a semiquaver etc) It’s not always possible but desirable in that it adds to the tension within the music..
If we look at the first page (right at the bottom of the stave there.
…the 3 you see above the note (under the words quite fast) is not fingering but meant to indicate a 1/3rd of a crotchet.
… if you look at the middle of the page (where it says mf) the line is deliberately oblique so it is not meant to be played exactly in time but speeded up on repetition…
(rather like Stockhausen might write).
..this is still a work in progress in that say on this page there is a time indication for the notes from negative time (10”) and the signal is marked ‘quite fast’ – the notes in the middle stave have no marking….
How many wrong notes could you play before the piece ceases to be the piece? (Dave Truswell)
Hansel: “… Good question- it’s one which can be applied to composers writing incredibly complex rhythms in scores after 1945 which not many people can actually play those rhythms accurately… You have to take a balanced view- so the composer will expect that it will be performed as near as possible and the performer will work at is slowly over a period of months before a performance and that it should all hang together.
… The music that starts the piece reoccurs several times over in different guises- so it goes in sequence in fact. By working with sequence I’m trying to heighten this sense of tension and also have a uniformity within the music. So if you can imagine if you are really listening fairly acutely.. if I play too many wrong notes especially in passages like the signals, then this will become a little bit distorting…
“Do you learn the negative time music as well even though it is not played? So that you run this music through your mind as you are playing
(Student)
Hansel: “Yes I think you have got to be thinking of the other levels as well. If I was writing an orchestral piece and had asked someone else to conduct it, then I would expect that person to understand what is happening in the other dimensions (in this case)… what is happening in the ‘unheard’ elements must inform what is happening here.
“…Tonight’s performance includes the two studies. The second one is much shorter than the first, and I’m still working on a bit of it because I suddenly had an idea; if there was suppose to be nine dimensions, why am I just talking about one? There could be two (or more) dimensions going backwards in different times! “If you could give this score to an audience hearing this for the first time- so that they could see the negative time writing would you ? ( Ewan MacGregor:Student)
So that is something, for me still to work through….”
“ I would love to do that…
“If I was writing for a larger group then my music would have to be more metrical and for me therefore less interesting, though easier to play…it’s a bit like Cage’s 4:33
.. my question has always been with this piece (as much as I think it’s great) what happens beyond that?
… I would love to give an audience as much information as possible.. for me the concept behind the work is just as important to the finished work of art…
“It would be great to be able to see what’s in your head whilst you play the piece..(student)
“Well of course you never can unless we can attach electrodes to the back of the brain.. i.e. the stimulation of the centre of the brain through an electrical device… the future maybe?
“Are there any moments in the piece when the two dimension fit together in time- you know where you get deja vu and people perceive they have heard/seen something before? (Tom Warden:student)
…You might get the feeling you have heard an earlier sequence in the piece…I write in very small elements, mainly because the signals are really not part of the music; they are there to stimulate and to create a sense of expectancy (as we discussed earlier) so given that I’m not sure ‘déjà vu’ would be possible… I’d like to say one thing here however, it’s whether writing like this could lead to some sort of piling on- like a fugue (subjects/countersubjects etc)? I hope perhaps to consider this more fully in a string quartet and there will be a sense of argument… what I’m doing here is perhaps more compositionally simpler….
… you would have to indicate in the positive time that the same was happening in the negative time to make déjà vu work here… its not impossible…
Stanislaw Hansel finished by asking for the Mars/Earth slide obtained from the NASA site and concluded with a final further thought…
About 5 years ago I read about a machine built which distorts time.. it uses magnetism.. something, if it could be big enough, could be built to distort time. It would involve two planet size magnets in orbit at about the same distance as the moon one either side of the earth. The time on the earth would be faster (or slower) than if we were sitting on Mars watching all that. The earth would be going at a different pace as to how it would appear to us on Mars. Then if you were able to have two players playing one on the earth and one on the moon and you were able to hear them. I wonder what the effect of that would be because you would perceive one playing in one particular time dimension and one on the moon in another time dimension.